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Ficto-feminism is offered here as a creative method for feminist historical inquiry in management and organizational studies (MOSs).

This paper introduces a new method called ficto-feminism. Using feminist polemics as a starting point, ficto-feminism fuses aspects of collective biography with the emic potential of autoethnography and rhizomatic capacity of fictocriticism to advance not only a new account of history in subject but also in style of writing.

The aim of ficto-feminism is to create a plausible, powerful and persuasive account of an overlooked female figure which not only challenges convention but also surfaces her lost lessons and accomplishments to benefit today's development of theory and practice.

The paper reviews the methodological components of ficto-feminism and speaks to the merit of writing differently and incorporating fictional techniques.

To illustrate the method in action, the paper features a non-fiction, fictitious conversation with Hallie Flanagan (1890–1969) and investigates her role as national director of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) (1935–1939). The FTP was part of the most elaborate relief programs ever conceived as part of the New Deal (a series of public works projects and financial reforms enacted in the 1930s in the USA).

In this chapter, we explore genre-blurring writing, where fiction meets theory, following the argument that texts in management and organisation studies suffer from the ‘textbook syndrome’. The stories that we tell through textbooks not only influence, but also set boundaries for, the way understandings are developed through the eyes of the reader. Often textbooks are written in a way that lead the reader into an idealised linear understanding of an organisation – far from the problems, dilemmas and messy everyday life that managers experience. Our discussion builds on previous literature on writing differently and our own experiences of writing a textbook by involving a professional novelist. Engaging in genre-blurring writing opens up how we think not only about writing, fiction and facts but also in our role as scientists. By situating ourselves, as researchers, at the intersection of fiction and the scientific work, not only new ways of writing, but also of thinking emerge. We discuss three aspects through which fiction challenge and develop our writing and thinking, namely to write with voice, resonance and an open end. Through genre-blurring writing, we create opportunities both to learn and to engage students in learning.

Gramophony of an Application for ‘Recognition of a Condition of Permanent Desire’ is a collage of theoretical arguments, creative writing and audio performances that examines notions of (life) writing, voice and subjectivity from a poststructuralist feminist perspective. By engaging in what Smith and Dean (2009) describe as the interwoven processes of ‘practice‐led research’ and ‘research‐led practice’ I combined conceptual research with creative practice and produced a form of hybridised text that blurs traditional binaries of ‘fact’/‘fiction’, ‘creative’/‘critical’ and ‘speech’/‘writing’. Following Smith (1995), I suggest understanding Gramophony as an example of ‘performative autobiography’ that challenges traditional discourses of identity and representation.